Westport Middle School study assesses PCB remediation needs

WESTPORT — The Westport School Committee appointed a new special education director and attendance officers at their last meeting, where Superintendent of Schools Carlos Colley also presented an environmental firm's comprehensive update on the Westport Middle School's PCB issues.

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By JASON PROTAMI

southcoasttoday.com

By JASON PROTAMI

Posted Jun. 5, 2013 at 12:31 PM

By JASON PROTAMI

Posted Jun. 5, 2013 at 12:31 PM

» Social News

WESTPORT — The Westport School Committee appointed a new special education director and attendance officers at their last meeting, where Superintendent of Schools Carlos Colley also presented an environmental firm's comprehensive update on the Westport Middle School's PCB issues.

With a pending Statement of Interest submitted to the Massachusetts's School Building Authority that includes plans to abandon the middle school, the School Committee received an environmental firm's overall assessment of what a complete PCB remediation and encapsulation plan, including waste shipping, would entail.

The comprehensive report by Fuss and O'Neill EnviroScience includes a history of actions already taken in the clean-up process as well as ongoing monitoring and testing results. The plan also outlines what further steps would be needed to make the building viable for long-term school use if it is not abandoned.

The inclusion of such a report was required by the Environmental Protection Agency as part of a larger architectural study done for the town by CGKV Architects; that study focused on the scope of work needed for the renovation of the middle school should the need arise.

A complete copy of the Fuss and O'Neill report can be found on the School Committees page of the Westport Schools web-site at www.westportschools.org.

Following the recommendation of the Screening Committee, the School Committee appointed Elaine Santos, the current Special Education Supervisor, to fill the upcoming vacancy of SPED Director for the next school year. The 10-member search committee tasked to find a replacement for the retiring Ann Harkin included Dr. Colley, several SPED teachers, school administrators and a parent.

Ms. Santos has been at her current position as supervisor in Westport "for about three months," she told the committee members, having worked in the Fall River school system for the last 25 years as both a regular education and SPED teacher. She was also the director of the city's SPED summer camp for several years.

A state court policy shift re-assigning the responsibility of filing truancy complaints with Juvenile Court from a school's Student Resource Officer to school personnel has forced principals to become court-appointed attendance officers.

"We took them down to the court and put them through their paces," Dr. Colley said of the complaint-filing training process the four new appointees underwent.

The topic prompted questions by committee members about Westport's current attendance situation. Dr. Colley told them the court's want the schools to take a "top-first approach" to the problem, and target those with the greatest number of unexcused absences first. Each school has two or three at-risk students in that frequent absence category, with a total number 20-30 students with unexcused absences reported by the court, Dr. Colley indicated.

Much of the primary documentation that goes along with a complaint, such as phone records, initially comes from a principal or vice principal anyway, he said.

"The one advantage I do see of this system is the courts could ask the assistant principals questions the SROs perhaps could not be able to answer, like how is this effecting a students education?" he added.